Security of the mind

Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP)

Security of the mind is episode 7 in the new GCSP Podcast Series. Dr Paul Vallet interviews Dr Hani Dabbagh, Digital Strategist. Dr Paul Vallet: I'm joined by Dr Hani Dabbagh. But to Hani Dabbagh, was an Executive in Residence at the GCSP in 2019 and is now an Alumnus Fellow is a digital strategist. After his PhD in information engineering and electronics, he began a lengthy career with Hewlett Packard rising from system engineer to digital business development manager. He then became an independent consultant and senior advisor to companies. As an early adopter of web 2.0 for marketing campaigns, he has focused his attention on the impact of disruptive digital technology on customer behaviour, and how to harness it for business benefit. This comes with an increased attention to what he calls “Cyber security of the mind" Dr Hani Dabbagh: Thanks very much for the invitation. Dr Paul Vallet: Well, to begin our conversation, my first question to you is what is the state of cyber security of the mind today for individuals, cooperation’s, or organisations? Do you think the basic problem have been given solutions? Or are you concerned with a newer generation of issues? Dr Hani Dabbagh: Thanks Paul. I mean, first of all, I think there is a serious security breach of our minds that I don't believe has really been fully grasped by the population, I use that term a little bit tongue in cheek, I like to use the term cyber security because it catches the attention of so many today. But I'm not really talking about cyber security of systems, of IT systems, I really am talking about a security breach of our minds. It's really a breach that's hiding in plain sight. And I think it has serious, far reaching consequences to our democracy, and to our society as a whole. So, I don't really believe that this is really fully under control today. The whole things really started around 2007, when there was a kind of coming together, alignment of the of the planets, as it were, with the introduction of the iPhone, Android, Kindle, Twitter, Facebook started opening up. And in those days, we went from the dial up connection to the “always connected”. And then for people a lot younger than me, this might sound a little bit strange. But there was a time when we were not always connected, we actually had to have a modem and plug it in the wall like we hear that noise connecting us to the internet. This we take for granted today. But we were not always connected. Once we're always connected, it then becomes very easily, always trackable. And once we were always trackable, then we're always profiled. And we really then go from one stage to the next to become predictive, predictable, we are able to predict, very accurately when you will change back, you will able to predict when you will stop your subscription, it's actually predictable. And Amazon can ship your product before you even order it. And from there, we became manipulable. All that really has come from that large amounts of data collection that has been going on, and we get raw data. And in get out of that, deduce from that really a lot of behavioural knowledge and inferences about us is what we sometimes call the attention economy. Or I like to call it the “no free lunch economy”, whereby we're getting these so called free products free for us to use but come at a very big cost and what I call a kind of a Faustian deal, where we're selling our souls for something that has a huge cost to us. And whereas a lot of people today are aware of micro targeting of advertising advertisements, people are aware that it was nice to have an ad of a product that I enjoy or will enjoy.